Page - 637 - in The Complete Plato

we were just asking—what organs will you assign for the perception of these notions? THEAETETUS: You are thinking of being and not being, likeness and unlikeness, sameness and difference, and also of unity and other numbers which are applied to objects of sense; and you mean to ask, through what bodily organ the soul perceives odd and even numbers and other arithmetical conceptions. SOCRATES: You follow me excellently, Theaetetus; that is precisely what I am asking. THEAETETUS: Indeed, Socrates, I cannot answer; my only notion is, that these, unlike objects of sense, have no separate organ, but that the mind, by a power of her own, contemplates the universals in all things. SOCRATES: You are a beauty, Theaetetus, and not ugly, as Theodorus was saying; for he who utters the beautiful is himself beautiful and good. And besides being beautiful, you have done me a kindness in releasing me from a very long discussion, if you are clear that the soul views some things by herself and others through the bodily organs. For that was my own opinion, and I wanted you to agree with me. THEAETETUS: I am quite clear. SOCRATES: And to which class would you refer being or essence; for this, of all our notions, is the most universal? THEAETETUS: I should say, to that class which the soul aspires to know of herself. SOCRATES: And would you say this also of like and unlike, same and other? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And would you say the same of the noble and base, and of good and evil? THEAETETUS: These I conceive to be notions which are essentially relative, and which the soul also perceives by comparing in herself things past and present with the future. SOCRATES: And does she not perceive the hardness of that which is hard by the touch, and the softness of that which is soft equally by the touch? THEAETETUS: Yes. SOCRATES: But their essence and what they are, and their opposition to one another, and the essential nature of this opposition, the soul herself 637